Any praise for Lionel Barrymore is well deserved, but if you want a truly classic recording of "A Christmas Carol," then the 1938 version of this program is far superior. Ironically, Mr. Barrymore's poor health prevented him from traveling to New York to perform and Orson Welles played the role of Scrooge as well as narrating the story. The 1938 production has a lot more energy than poor Mr. Barrymore could muster in 1939. It is also tauter and fuller. There was considerable padding at the end of the 1939 broadcast to fill the time slot because so much of Scrooge's role was pared back to spare Mr. Barrymore. But in the 1938 broadcast, Mr. Welles is more than up to the task.

This version has been in circulation for some time, but this is the very best sound quality that I have heard. Thanks to whoever posted this to keep in mind that the mp3 format is lossy which means some sound quality is lost when encoding to mp3 or ogg, or any other lossy format. Flac and wav are not lossy.

A must listen every season. While there are many, many versions of Dickens in every medium yet invented, this is the best, hands down. None better. Tops. Cream of the crop.